


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 3)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 07:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16949556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: I have been writing a lot of meta for a long-ass time on Tumblr.





	1. 3x05 & 3x06 - Dean & Sam’s moons

**** ****

**3x05 & 3x06** - Dean & Sam’s moons

I am assuming they’re both on full moon a month a part as part of season 3’s year-long schedule, although tbh it was probably an aesthetic choice and no one stopped to consider it. 3x05 is near Halloween, 3x06 must therefore be in November, and the Christmas episode is 3x08.

Anyway some musings on the moons because I love that they both have one with this same transition.

The one in 3x05 is placed directly over Dean’s bed and the camera continues to pan down over him sleeping (which I didn’t gif because it would have been huge and I made aesthetic choices >.>) which to me represents it as a thought bubble, almost, showing him dreaming. Dean’s pastoral fairytale dream I am pretty sure is photoshopped because it reappears in 3x10, the dream episode, in Bobby’s hotel room, sans moon but representing the same sort of thing since it was already here representing a dream:

[http://www.homeofthenutty.com/supernatural/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=54&pid=12108#top_display_media](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D54%26pid%3D12108%23top_display_media&t=NWYyMDFkZjIzMWFiMTM5ODQ1YmM5ZjAwYzcxZDJhZTI5NTY0NTE5MCxRYVRZZzdvQg%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F162590603310%2F3x05-3x06-dean-sams-moons-i-am-assuming&m=1)

in that case I think it’s pretty ironic that it’s the sunny daytime version of the pastoral dream. Almost like the scene Sam steps into when he leaves the house, but of course it’s so much worse inside, not like it seems on the surface.

Giving Dean this transition I think is exceptionally beautiful because it shows the prosaic normal of their motel-living lives as the sort of landscape they truly inhabit, and then transitioning to Dean’s dream, the fairytales they metaphorically inhabit. I wrote this 2 years ago [in my last rewatch](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/123724458688/spn-hellatus-rewatch-3x05more-i-should) because of this moment:

> I have a lot of feelings about Supernatural as actual folklore, like, with the stories that are told, and how they’re told, and the main characters as folkloric heroes and blah blah, stuff I’d need to dust off some old books of mine to really talk about properly. :P Suffice to say, going from the hum drum exterior shot of the realities of life on the road to this mystical fairytale woodland with the puddle as a great lake and the dull motel as a mill, bigger hills, bigger trees, no sodium lights or bright vending machine… Sort of putting the magic into what they do and making the leap of imagination into the stories that happen around them.

There’s something that really soothes me about this episode because of this shot. Dean’s so prickly to fairytales and yes there’s been meta written about his deflecting behind porn, his calling Sam gay for knowing the details, and his instinctive reaction that he’s not gonna kiss the frog and how he still kinda thought it was going to be his role to be the “princess” there on first take. All been done before, but still. (I’m sure my 3x05 tag doesn’t have a whole lot in it but I’m pretty sure I reblogged commentary about all of this in more detail one time or another)

Dean has defensive walls a mile high about liking this sort of stuff because it might make him seem weak, and there’s a real thread through this season and season 4 about their strength, where Dean is stuck behind the facade but even before he goes to hell it’s obvious he’s putting a lot of it on in many moments. Sam becomes more and more manipulated by a lot of the baddies they pass that he has to be stronger than Dean, and by 3x09 Dean calls him out on it and Sam says he’s trying to be more like Dean - that is, a harsher, more vicious hunter. In 3x11 mystery spot!Sam betrays that’s more like John once he’s gone all the way to the far end of that mindset, but anyway, Sam puts a name to it as trying to be more like Dean, and in season 4 he feels he’s surpassed Dean and become stronger than him through Ruby’s manipulations, taking this to the logical end of their fight.

(As I was saying [last night](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/162562824368/so-i-thought-i-had-a-nice-easy-dvd-to-just-watch) this season establishes Cain & Abel as the template early on in 3x04 and 3x06 - I watched the little behind the scenes bit about 3x06 on the DVD and it was the VFX guy congratulating themselves on a job well done, but he did agree that the ghosts taking each other out was where the show might go “this season” (oh season 3) so I’m feeling more certain than ever that the show decided this was the new template for the brothers all the way back here and started to apply it…)

Anyway. This episode, then, Dean gets to have the macho fight with the Big Bad Wolf (which he might think is silly but is a pretty brutal fight and he was this close to killing him before the doctor broke through to the little girl, so he at least physically defeated the Big Bad Wolf in a sort of metaphorical way) - I kind of feel like that moment might have set him more at ease, defeating a strong masculine element, as the Big Bad Wolf was the same guy in a couple of stories - the 3 Pigs as well as Little Red Riding Hood, which just goes to show the whole basic pool of characters being drawn from nature of fairy tales.

In some ways Dean is always trying to defeat the masculine elements that provide him the toughest opposition… Compare the Big Bad Wolf fight to (everyone rolls their eyes) 12x22 and the fight with Ketch - brutal, man-on-man, smashing up all the furniture and wrestling brute strength against each other. In season 3 the masculine influence on Dean is the ongoing ghost of John, who metaphorically got sucked up into Gordon, who Sam (the one who identified this idea out loud) defeats in 3x07 after he also goes fully monstrous as a result of his black and white view on monsters.

Dean defeats yet another metaphorical representation of this in the Big Bad Wolf and goes to bed to sleep, and we get this transition to what he dreams of - a peaceful, pastoral fairytale scene. No pretensions or anything, just a reconciliation. Dean can occupy the motels and gritty Americana as much as he likes, and still dream of fairytales if he damn well wants to, and there is a calm and innocence to his sleep in this scene, contrasted to Sam sneaking out to confront the crossroads demon.

In 3x06, Sam’s moon, it’s after he has the brilliant idea of how to defeat the ghost and save Bela from a seeming fatal, inescapable and twice self-inflicted curse. The ghost hunts those who killed their own family, and Bela’s thievery has sold the one thing that she could have used to save herself simply.

Sam has the bright idea to take this all back to the start - the river ends at the source - and to use a spell to summon the original combatants of this ancient sibling rivalry to take each other off the board. We’re shown the moon huge and ominous and clear, but as Sam does the incantation (hi Castiel) the clouds gather over it. Sam’s moon is an omen, fading to him doing spellwork that involves blood (the clip again continues to pan downwards, this time showing Sam tipping a bottle of blood into the bowl), and the moon is a spell circle. One of invocation, rather than protection or warding, as we most often see in this show.

Of course it mirrors Chuck & Amara, Cain & Abel and in the words of the VFX dude, Sam & Dean. I don’t know exactly what was going to happen in season 3, but the staging of one ghost lunging into the other and taking them both out also has echoes of Michael charging at Lucifer in 5x22 and both falling into the cage together, and of course their fight was another step in the siblings pitted against each other.

Also, of course, Sam using magic to achieve this, to me is a part of the old “season 10 is the new season 3” stuff… Mel sent me a bunch of stuff after I talked about this last night (and, sorry, I talked about this one last night so I have slightly less to say here :P) so I’ll link that

<https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/114299870202/63-the-final-scene-of-the-episode-drives-the>   
<https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/126306223069/season-10-is-the-new-season-3-some-parallels-from>   
<https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/tagged/season-10-is-the-new-season-3>


	2. 3x05 and an unexpected but weirdly direct parallel to 12x22

> DR. GARRISON But what you said about my wife poisoning Callie, that's—
> 
> SAM Sir. Callie told us.
> 
> DR. GARRISON What?!
> 
> SAM Not in so many words, but in her own way. She told us.
> 
> DR. GARRISON (Shakes head) My wife loved Callie. So how is – how is that possible?
> 
> SAM I don't know. But it is.
> 
> DR. GARRISON No. No I – I don't believe you.
> 
> SAM Look, Callie is killing people. She's angry. She's desperate, because nobody will listen to her. So you have to listen to her. Please, listen to your daughter.
> 
>  
> 
> DR. GARRISON Callie? Callie, it's Daddy. It's me, Daddy. Is it true? Mommy did that to you? I–I know I wasn't listening before, but I'm listening now. Daddy's here. Please honey, is – is there anyway that you can tell me?
> 
> SAM Doctor...
> 
> DR. GARRISON looks up at SAM, who nods toward DR. GARRISON’s side. Callie's spirit stands beside the bed, looking sad and forlorn.
> 
> DR. GARRISON Is it true?
> 
> Callie's spirit nods.
> 
>  
> 
> DR. GARRISON (In tears) Oh – I'm so sorry, baby. But listen to me. You gotta stop what you're doing, okay? You're hurting people. I know everything now. I know the truth. It's time for you to let go. It's time for me to let you go.
> 
> DR. GARRISON turns back to Callie's body in the hospital bed. He caresses her face and kisses her forehead tenderly. Callie's monitors BUZZ and flatline.
> 
> * * *
> 
> DEAN
> 
> You lied to me. I was a kid.
> 
> (Mary goes back to the sink. She seems like she hears Dean but is pretending not to)
> 
> DEAN
> 
> You promised you'd keep me safe. And then you make a deal with Azazel. Yeah, it saved Dad's life, but I'll tell you something else that happened. Because on November 2, 1983, old Yellow Eyes came waltzing in to Sammy's room, because of your deal.
> 
> (Mary turns abruptly and walks past Dean to Sam’s crib in the living room)
> 
> DEAN
> 
> You left us. Alone. 'Cause Dad was just a shell.
> 
> (Dean approaches Mary at the crib)
> 
> His perfect wife? Gone. Our perfect Mom, the perfect family... was gone. And I... I had to be... more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe. And that wasn't fair. And I couldn't do it. And you wanna know what that was like?
> 
> (Dean walks around Mary to look at her directly and she turns away)
> 
> They killed the girl that he loved. He got possessed by Lucifer. They tortured him in Hell. And he lost his soul. His soul. All because of you. All of it was because of you.
> 
> I hate you.
> 
> (Deans voice breaks as tears run down his face)
> 
> I hate you. And I love you. 'Cause I can't – I can't help it. You're my Mom. And I understand...'cause I have made deals to save the ones I love more than once.
> 
> (Mary continues to look away but seems to hear him)
> 
> I forgive you. I forgive you. For all of it. Everything. On the other side of this, we can start over, okay? You, me, Sam. We can get it right this time. But I need you to fight. Right now, I need you to fight. I need you – I need you to look at me, Mom. I need you to really look at me and see me. Mom, I need you to see me. Please.
> 
> (Mary turns around slowly and looks up at Dean, eyes widening)
> 
> MARY
> 
> Dean?
> 
> DEAN
> 
> Mom.
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

3x05 ends the case part of the episode with the reveal a kid was poisoned by a parent, has been trapped in a child-like stasis ever since, and required their surviving parent, who had been innocently blind to this and accidentally feeding the ongoing trauma (caught up in those stories!) and not even realising there was something that needed to be heard, while the grown adult trapped in this stasis is represented as a child in the state they were when the parent last interacted with what they think of as them…

If this all sounds familiar, it's the direct emotional dynamic presented in 12x22 in the "I need you to see me" moment for Mary and Dean, though in 3x05 it was being used for Sam to learn to let go of Dean - inverting his position in the dynamic so that he was the one with the parental interest in Dean. Or perhaps, power of attorney?

The step mother could also have been interpreted, in the past, as a John parallel, if you look at it like she was getting a benefit from harming the girl and probably was messed up enough to not consider how she felt (I mean, to the point of poisoning her into a coma so obviously) - then John’s messed up expectations on Dean by this point in season 3, in an episode Sam and Dean use as a battle ground mirror to their situation that they can SEE is one about Sam letting Dean go or not in the same way, we know also that the only reason Dean is dying is because of John’s messed up expectations on him. Even in Season 2 they knew John was asking too much and shouldn’t have said his last words to Dean but by season 3 we're dealing with the consequences and now Dean is in the position to have Sam furious at him for passing on the favour of selling his soul. It tops off a lifetime of John putting an emotional burden on Dean - some of his OTHER last words to Dean were how even as a kid he would look after John instead of vice versa which I think was supposed to be a positive recognition finally of how much work Dean had done propping up the family, but also an apology for putting him in that position and recognising how little he had done. So I can see a parallel by season 3 where the narrative is swinging around in clear recognition of this - Dream a Little Dream of Me is going to make this textual soon enough by putting clear words to how Dean feels from which there is no going back on sugarcoating John back to pretending he never harmed Dean at all.

And in that respect the doctor, the father of the coma girl, was always a sort of benign Mary mirror, not playing a huge part in the Winchester family dynamic mirrors as Mary was dead and so her role in understanding all this as an active agent of the narrative was by the by. She had no agency or need to see or understand it. So it makes it even funnier to me that his role became literally a proto mirror to this scene with Mary and her understanding needed to free the kid (Dean) from this emotional trap now the active part of the story.

And the vindication of the little girl getting her message across and being finally understood, and gaining closure and getting to move on as a result, just kind of blows me away because it’s retroactively made the episode an incredible mirror. It once didn’t even make sense to say she would need to understand Dean herself, because that requires us to be confident she has even half a chance of getting a POV in the story. That her understanding would be important enough to change anything. From seasons 3 through to 12 this mirror didn't really reflect anything about Mary in the story. You could extrapolate it would suck for her to know how John had treated Dean but she had no role in freeing Dean in the same way, by seeing and recognising the trauma.

I can’t tell if Berens did this deliberately or if the fact this episode has the exact same resolution as 12x22 is just coincidence, because that’s some pretty obscure canon recollection for a MotW that doesn’t seem to have a lot of notoriety that even, for example, the next one does for Kripke hating it so much and I thiiink was this on the list of episodes Chuck apologises for in 4x18?

Perhaps it goes right to the top and was a Dabb suggestion for how it had to go down, because watching these two episodes back to back you go from 12x22 to a feeling like in some other world I would be writing meta about 3x06 vs 12x13, 9x21 and 6x04 because of the concept of having a dead ship captain, summoning the ghost, and using it for the resolution of family drama by having them confront each other again (this is the episode where Sam invokes Cas as part of that spell which is always worth a giggle). I felt like 6x04 pulled on this episode loosely just for having a vengeful ghost out to get family drama resolved - specifically going after family members that killed each other, and watching season 10 recently plus comments in season 12 between Rowena and Crowley, they’re dead set on killing each other, as part of the Worst Family parallel as they often are when their dynamic comes up. Unfortunately I just can’t get my head around 12x13 enough to work out how this all fits together but I have to believe there was a serious intention to resolve some stuff thematically which never made its way onto the screen.

But this arc was always tied into the Cain & Abel stuff by bringing in “Seth” or Oskar, Rowena’s favoured other son. (There was a lot of meta between 10x22 and 10x23 about “Seth” because of biblical connotations I think tying it directly into that family but I genuinely can’t remember because I don’t do Bible lore, like… at all. Anyway he was a spare 3rd forgotten brother from somewhere or other directly relevant, if not Cain and Abel’s we-forgot-Adam comparison) and Oskar vs Gavin was something that… didn’t really happen except for the comment that that was what it had all been about from Rowena. As the grand finale to the MacLeod family drama that Dabb started based on the model of 3x06, which specifically mentions that one brother killed the other in a very “Cain and Abel” way, I am kinda annoyed more than ever we didn’t get a ghost ship 2 episode to show how things were all upside down and different in that dabb era way but… Ugh, I don’t know. Some episodes you would suggest minor upgrades if you had the powers, others you’d just take back to the drawing board :P

But while we’re on the subject of Cain and Abel, 3x06’s last conversation also has a conversation that the “same circumstances you’d do the same” argument in 9x13 directly mirrors as in does backwards and to a completely different conclusion… Which I find fascinating especially as the episode namedrops Cain and Abel in the first place. And 3x04 (Carver’s first episode) uses the phrase “brother’s keeper”, also from the Cain story, about Sam and Dean. I mean season 9 & 10 churned up a lot of season 3 and we went over most of this at the time… I have just somehow found a continuous ramble in something that makes enough sense to alarm me that I managed to segue between each subject of what was one line notes I made on the train. So, cool.


	3. Some Pre-Cas Thoughts on the Dynamics Of TFW in 3x16, or, Thanks Ruby

Up to 3x16 and maybe it’s better to talk about this in season 4 but I just think season 3 sets up so much stuff about those season 4 arcs which are the direct emotional fallout… I don’t really know what to quote except that the entire Road So Far montage summarises the important parts of season 3 and then we go to Sam and Dean having their last little conversation about this:

> SAM  
> Hey, Dean.  
> Look, we’re cutting it close, I know. But we’re gonna get this done. I don’t care what it takes, Dean. You’re not gonna go to hell. I’m not gonna let you.  
> I swear. Everything’s gonna be okay.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, okay.

I suppose you can take this as I also didn’t really comment on 3x15 after/during watching it but with all the hindsight of season 4 and knowing Dean gets rescued but not by Sam I can see a lot of character things being built here. Obviously everything after the writers’ strike was written knowing Dean was going to Hell so there’s a lot of irony in Sam’s desperation to save Dean and how in 3x14, 15 and now here he reaffirms that he’s going to save Dean and that he can do something about it.

I guess I just have a lot of sad Sam n Cas feelings that Cas is the one who saves Dean in the end and Sam feels more than worthless about that because he was making himself believe he could save Dean, and I find Sam’s season 4 arc one of his best and most interesting and it’s all built on not feeling strong enough, and wanting to be stronger, more useful, etc, and in season 3, which is a season I complain about a lot, one really good thing they do is give Sam such a firm basis for this whole thing because there’s a build from basically the end of season 2 about how he feels about Dean’s deal which morphs into this whole thing Ruby exploits etc etc.

Anyway weirdly (and I lost this thought for a couple of hours because it was so random I couldn’t remember it at all from context for ages) I remembered in 8x09 how Sam betrayed a lot of thoughts about how Benny seemed to be compared to Ruby in his head (something I was pretty amused about in 12x02 that Toni brought up the 2 of them in comparison while spilling intel she has on Sam and Dean to them)… It was a pretty subtextual thing because he never really said it and Dean was the one who brought Ruby up at the end of season 8, but even though it’s the Amy Pond fight they overtly seem to rehash a lot of Sam’s comments about Benny and Dean seem to come from this place. I do think a lot about season 8 and Sam and how his insecurity about Dean manifested, and that one line back here in the end of season 3 where he’s reassuring Dean and probably reassuring himself a lot more because it’s too awful to bear thinking about, does make a very firm ground for Sam to feel betrayed and supplanted by anyone who can save Dean when he couldn’t. Cas gets Dean out of Hell, Benny gets Dean out of Purgatory, both in times when Sam was helpless and in the second case when he was trying really hard not to repeat the mistakes of the past which got him into such a bad situation with Ruby in the first place.

(I think one of the purposes of Sam’s line in 8x23 about Dean trusting another angel over him is the seed for the Gadreel thing, that they had at least an inkling they wanted to do this in season 9 at the time, but it does in context have no real explanation for what Sam is thinking of except making us wonder if he’s jealous of Cas… I genuinely couldn’t find much on my meta rewatch of season 8 just because Cas is kept at such ridiculous arms length all of season 8, but in 8x08 there’s a low key competitive element between Sam and Cas at least with the shotgun riding thing, and I think the point there was to show Sam had some feelings about Cas supplanting his place rather than just joining the dynamic, although it was fairly muted, probably so as not to start more wars in the fandom than necessary as it could easily end up unfairly vilifying Cas, which is another thing I guess Benny did in the narrative.)

All that to say, right on the eve of Cas showing up I’m making one more post about him in the pre-Cas part of the show, to say that I think the irony about who will save Dean from Hell is deeply rooted in season 3 and is, I think, with Ruby latching onto Sam already, there’s a hindsight feeling of the utter lack Dean has here of what Cas represents for him… What we see in the last few episodes in season 3 is the building blocks of the emotional arc that becomes in season 4 the Sam x Ruby, Dean x Cas parallel, doing some groundwork on Sam and leaving Dean in the lurch for not being paired off in this dynamic yet. 

The fight later in the episode with Ruby where Ruby’s trying to convince Sam to use his powers has the same feeling as her trying to convince him to sacrifice Nancy in 3x12, another fight Dean won with his alternative plan only for Lilith to be like, welp, better make it even harder to say no the next time, and probably was one of the most important chips in Sam’s resolve minus Dean’s actual death to make him listen to Ruby and start to use his powers/drink demon blood. In 4x04 that fight is very different because Dean has a “because Cas said so and therefore God thinks it’s wrong” (Simpler times although God did tell Sam it was unsympathetic much later in the season because lol hindsight, but yeah, Dean working with what he knows at the time >.>) to fall back on while telling Sam why he doesn’t approve of him using his powers. 

Not that it helps at all, but it’s this feeling that Dean has been paired off as well, while in the end of season 3 he just feels so helpless and for once in his life seems 90% resigned to dying even if he will always hold out hope for a plan to last minute magically find a way out that works, he is going along with his self-made fate for once, and his attitude to it is very different when it’s someone else’s destiny pushed on him.

… this is all very rambly. It’s late, sorry :P


End file.
